Use THIS to Convert More of YOUR Facebook Leads

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In this episode, we dive into the real reason most Facebook ads fail after the lead comes in and why generating leads is only half the battle. We break down the systems, follow-up strategies, CRM automations, and AI tools that are helping businesses turn cold Facebook leads into actual sales, while exposing the biggest mistakes advertisers make when running Facebook lead generation campaigns. Whether you’re a business owner, agency, or media buyer looking to improve lead quality, increase conversions, and get more ROI from your Facebook ads, this episode is packed with practical insights on Facebook advertising, lead nurturing, automation and scaling profitable campaigns.

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Transcript

0:02

Welcome to Let's run Facebook ads with me, Nick Boddington. This podcast is your go to for mastering Facebook ads. But as you know, success doesn't stop at the ad itself. We'll dive into everything from funnels and e-commerce to email marketing, lead generation and more. If you're ready to take your skills to the next level, check out my new school platform@school.com. The Ads clinic. Inside you'll find how to videos and live dropping clinicals where you can ask your Facebook questions and get the answers you need to grow your business. And lastly, if you enjoy the podcast, it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the channel. It's the best way to help the podcast grow and keep bringing you valuable content every week. Let's get on with the podcast. Hello and welcome back to. Let's run Facebook as a podcast for myself, Nick Boddington. And we have been joined again today by James Urquhart who is going to ask me some questions or a question. We'll see how it goes on Facebook advertising using questions that have come from our community, which is school, the Ads clinic. If you're looking for a free community for videos, modules, chat with I think for 800 people now in there. So jump on that. There is a link below if you forget that URL. But James morning to you. Good morning. It's actually 4900 now. Nick 900. Wow. Yeah, that's a lot. He got a lot of people on the 30 a day joining up from my stats. It's a lot. It's really good. A lot of people need to have the Facebook ads. We we also do what we're just discussing. So for you guys listening we do an onboarding call. So if you join the ads the ads clinic on school. Com and join your on board is at 6 p.m. UK time on a Monday evening. We'll tell you how to use school, why matter has changed and how to fix your ads. So jump onto that. We had. We have about a hundred people register every week, don't we. Hey, while I've got you, I just wanted to ask. Would you like me to go into your ads manager and actually see what's working? Because I bet your ads aren't broken and I bet we can fix something. There's a reason our top clients stop guessing and start scaling. So if you've got campaigns that are burning cash, or you're having trouble barely even breaking even on them, let's have a look and let's see what we can fix. 100% no fluff, no sales pitch, just a pro-level ad review. So book your 30 minute free Facebook ad review session and walk away with some instant wins. Go to the Ads Clinic icon and book your call today. Do it now before you forget, but make sure you come back to listen to the rest of the podcast. Enjoy! So this week we had a lot of questions around sort of appointment setting. And what do you do after the lead. So I thought today, Nick, we could talk about a system that you've implemented. Yeah. Which I'm a huge, huge fan of and seems to be doing really, really well, which is close by. Yes. So for those listening, Nick, what is close? But those bot is an AI conversation bot. This isn't conversation by voice or audio. That's that is coming. Which something we want to try out, but it's going to take a lot of time to implement and get right. So that's being just paused for a second. But what we did do was implement something called close bot and it's close bot.com. I'll just go on to it just to make sure that you guys have got the. But we will put it into the description. It is. Yes. So we'll close Whatcom is it plugs in to my go. High level now go high level does have its own bot. But from doing research in the past before I was setting these up, this one seems to be on steroids compared to. So rather than go high level, which is amazing in so many different ways. Obviously. But this is just a their voice, their AI is just something else that's plugged in as another feature. Whereas Close Bot is a standalone platform that all their developers do is make it better, better and better, and it essentially replies to any SMS or WhatsApp's that you get. So in our community, when someone comes in, we welcome them with an SMS. Well we and that and that says hey, welcome to the as as clinic. Just let you know we've got an onboarding call on Mondays at six. Be really good for you to join. It's going to make you understand how the community works, etc., etc. and at the end of that we ask a question which is I just want to check where you are with your Facebook ads because we ask a question, they are well, a percentage of people are going to reply to that SMS or WhatsApp when that happens. That's when the AI bot takes over. So it doesn't just winningly text people for whatever reason in your in your telephone number database. It has to have a reason to start to have a conversation. So it started off by the reply from someone replying to you. So what we do is then so you could do it. There is a. We started off by doing a DVR campaign which is a database reactivation campaign. So many of you listening will have go high level or some kind of CRM, and you've probably got a load of data in their 2000, 4040 thousand people with their name, addresses and their mobile number. So I tested this out by going, right, how can I reactivate these people? And when I saw I plugged close by in, I went through their tutorials, which I think I think every every month or so they might do like some webinar sign up thing, which was really good. It was like a three day webinar which lasted about two hours each day, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. And they took you through the whole setup, how to use it, what your messaging should be to start. You know, because you've got to think about your messaging. You've got to get someone to reply. So you need to ask a good question. And then people came back starting that conversation and which was the database reaction reactive. Should I give an example of one that was reactivated? Neck. Yeah. So I've got one in front of me. This was a girl called Abigail. She's a law firm, single and Shillingford. Yeah. That's that's not far off there that so again, to your point close what's just been messaging saying how they're getting on and on the 22nd of April. Hey, have a girl just checking in so we can tailor Monday properly. What's your business name? And are you currently running any Facebook ads or just getting started? Hey, Nick, I'm just getting started. Nice. What's your business name and what you're trying to get from the ads right now? Leads but calls or online sales but calls. So again, you now know what she's trying to achieve. What's the name of your business so I can take the advice to your offer. An audience. That's the page you sent through the URL of the Facebook page, so you then know what it is. This has gone on for quite a while. She's actually let you know what the name of the businesses which is called for and partners. And then she's proceeded after you've asked all the bot in this case has said, if you can grab a screenshot from your ads manager, I'll tell you what's twink when we're on the call. She's then proceeded to send you over 2 or 3 screenshots for an actual ads manager. Yeah, I know, and bear in mind no human has been involved yet apart from her. No. And this was just the context here.

This was at 9: 7:45

30 in the evening. Yeah, yeah. The bots called Sam. So she thinks she's having a conversation with Sam. I think unless it's made it. Unless it's made myself be me, I'll do the messages sound. Well, it says just. She's replied by high neck, so. Oh, okay. So she thinks she's having a conversation with me? Yes. Half nine in the evening. Yeah. It's amazing, isn't it? did she book a call at the end of it? She'd already put the call. This is like then just getting this information post booking in the call. Yeah. Okay. So because the idea of this is the end goal and any of you can have, you can have different end goals. So you can have like a webhook which can link back to your CRM for some reason. Whatever what we've done with this one, it talks to our calendar and go high level to book a call with our setter, who is Luke. So it will be. You'll have a conversation if it thinks it asks a question of would you like to book a call so we can fix this, or look at how you're out of performing, etc. it will then book a call if she thought that she was having a conversation with me so it didn't book a coin loop or you know, you said it already had a call booked. So even though she's got a call booked, it's warming her up. Which means that when she then does come onto a call, a we've got her managed to have a look at and B we can actually it's going to be a better call isn't it. Well it is. And for me it's more about actually having the information and prior knowledge of the business before going on to the call. Yeah. You know, she's a law firm. Yeah. You can actually see on the account, you know, again, it's a very basic. So so just to interrupt you there, you're logged in to go high level looking at her contact details at the moment I am. Yes. Yeah. So there's two places you can look. You can look you can't because haven't got access but you can sit in the chat in close bot. But what I would do now is actually you're sitting in go high level which is our CRM. You've looked at her name and you're just looking at the conversation. Yes. Yeah. So before a call or anyone can go on to a call and just have a brief look at that conversation beforehand and see what's going on. And that's where her screenshots are. And you can just click on the screenshot of that and it literally just opens up. I'm looking at one campaign now. She's had 30 lead forms at a cost per result of 1 pound one 1.17 pound. Nice. I was just look at that I need may help. Yeah exactly. Depends on the quality though doesn't it. It's a low the lead cost usually the worst quality. But for most businesses. And you know we did touch on this last week which was around where most service businesses fall down. Yeah. Is in that follow up. Yeah. It's just it is what it is. Like I was chatting this last week. I generally believe most businesses fail with Facebook ads. Those that are lead generators generating not because the Facebook ads themselves, not because of their skill sets. It's because they do not follow up on the leads. Yeah, agree. And then they look at it over a period and go, why hasn't this worked? And again, to our point last week, which is it's not that it hasn't worked or it can't work, it's that you've not followed up because like any salesperson, if you don't get yes straight away, you're bored, right? They go into a lead nurturing campaign, maybe on your emails, they get your newsletters once a month and then that's it. No one's being proactive. Whereas using again in this case closed bot is is it amazing? Yeah. And we've only got one campaign in there like like just to give people an idea of a campaign. I don't think it's even called a campaign. But let's say we do call a campaign. You can have different ones for different things. So this one is just a booking call campaign. It's actually my DVR campaign, but I haven't changed anything because it's still based off the text. So even though I send I sent bolt text out to the for the 4000 people in the community. And anyone who replied the bot took over because that was what, a few months ago. Now that's kind of like that style is death. So now it's based on anyone who comes into the community and replies to that opening text or WhatsApp. But from this could be I mean, yeah, so that's one campaign. It gets more expensive if you use multiple campaigns. But just to give you an idea, this costs $60, $69 a month. So what's that £50. So 50 pounds a month. This is costing. And what we need to do actually is part my thing is we need to go through our clients in whatever format they have any of our services, and see who came through from the bot. I know at least a couple have because that the bots book those calls in. Oh, this is, this is this is generated revenue for you, without any doubt, without looking at the numbers. Exactly. But 100%. Yeah. So you've got anyone like people on roofs doing roof fixing booking points for that. You know, they're they're up a ladder. They can't get to the phone. That's the biggest thing from, you know, service based businesses. They can't pick up the phone, which is why you send them an email or something. But if you can send them a text, so you give you an idea of how that would work, you've got an ad going out. It goes to an instant form. That instant form basically says, hey, yeah, we'll come out and give you a quote for your fixing your roof. Fill in the details below. When they've done that, that will then go into go high level. You can then send them a text saying, hey, we've got your lead coming through. Is there a good time for us to come out or something like that? So you'd ask a question when they reply, which they're going to because they've just inquired. That's when the bot will take over. So even if you're up a roof or wherever you're doing, you can't get back to that text for four hours, which is four hours is a long time when someone's wanting to have their roof fixed. Now, the bot can do the conversation for you. it's really cool. It's really cool. I came on to close, but it was talking about closed bot seems to be more about people using it for their clients post. People like me using it for our own business. Yeah, I saw that. It's very sort of heavy towards sort of marketing agencies. You know, there's a clear focus on that. But when you look at your point and then around, you know, if you're up a ladder, you can't answer the phone or you can go back to someone. The lead is hottest when they first inquire. The statistics tell you that is that if you get back to a lead quickly, they're more likely to convert. Yeah. Will this takes that out then this takes that entirely out of your hands. Yeah. And it gives you the ability to reach all your leads in record time. Yeah. Now I'd recommend and I don't know if you ever see this to put a delay on. Not by a minute. We do to make it sound like. And you can actually do that with a text message. So obviously that a computer has done it. So be instant. Right. So I've put a rule in to say take this amount. I think it's like take 60s or 65 seconds or whatever it might be to make it more realistic, as in someone's received it, thought about an answer, typed it out, and then sent it because otherwise it would just be because you do see some of these like automation SMS and it's come back immediately, or what's given the game away. Like I think there's a, there's a time and a place when people are happy to know that it's a, it's a bot or a computer, but you want people to think it's a human being. Yeah. And the good thing with this is, is that it generally sounds like you're having an interaction with someone like I was when I was chatting to Abigail, actually, because I mentioned this to her when I just briefly spoke to her. There's a couple of things that in this, if you knew AI, you might collar it. Like you might just go. Am I chatting to Nick now? Am I chatting to. Yeah, an AI system of some description. You have to be in the game to really know. I've looked at it and gone. There's one line that I've gone out. All the text messages where I've gone, maybe. Well, just what was it? It was to do. I mean, whilst whilst you're looking based on that, I mean, it comes down to a time thing. If I plugged myself in for a few hours a week to get it even even better, you would iron out everything there. It's just that understanding of going in there and redoing the prompt of, like you said, like I've, I've noticed a couple of things where it might be repeating the same thing and taking on someone on that bit of a journey where they might be going, oh, you've just you just asked me that and now sort of thing, but you could, you could get all those ironed out. I mean, if you, if you knew this platform like we know Facebook ads or whatever, you could go in there and just like make it absolutely perfect. Because one thing I want to do is do some better now. Now, because we're getting people from the community, not just database reaction. I need to get it better at qualifying before it books a call. So that's one thing it needs to get better at. But but it's still good, right? It's still fantastic. So the one line where I thought which on Abigail was loved it but calls is a solid goal. Yeah. Like is that something that someone would write? No. But we can put that as an exclusion because. And then it it will never say that. Yeah. But no, all in all it's, it's but yeah, but for me, you know, as Facebook ads get more expensive every year as they typically do, well the CPM has increased every year. Like how can you make the most of them. Yeah, exactly. Like one of the things. So if anyone's thinking, well, how does it know about my business. You simply build your little and it's and guys it's really simple. This isn't like some I know it can get a little bit complicated, but that's only because you need to just sit in there. But the actual setting up to get this going is literally following what they say. I just I just wrote into chat chat, GPT, which we all use about my business. It then did a whole full summary of it. I read over that summary. Yeah that's right, put in anything. I put our services in what the service costs are, everything it could know about our business, what problems we're trying to solve for our clients. You know, they're running Facebook has, but they can't get them working. They use an agency, but the agency messes up or the every different scenario into a Google doc. And then all you do is you're as you're educating Sam, or you can change them if you want to. You just upload that Google doc and that's his brain. So anything you want him to know, you just you just edit the Google doc. See what I mean. That's it. And then you just have questions. So it has they call them nodes in this in this world they're called a node. Right. So a node is the different parts of that journey. And it's like a speech bubble. So someone comes in the reply back speaker all opens up. And that's called a node. And those different nodes can be called different things. So you have your call booking node and that's attached to your calendar. And then you have one of the questions we ask because we do most of the US and UK is what time zone you're in. So before it books a call and that person is going yeah, I'll have a call. It goes great, just a chat. What time? Where are you? What time zone are you in? And they'll go I'm in LA America. So it knows then that the calendar needs to be presented in their time zone. Like really clever stuff, to be fair. And what and what we had once, wasn't it? Once we noticed that the time zone was wrong for someone, but then after looking into it, they'd booked it themselves and put themselves in the wrong time zone. It wasn't the bot. So even though we were ready to blame the bot, it wasn't the bot. It was actually the individual in the US, thinking that it was just in their own time zone. Yeah, that one was the an error on that on that particular site. So very, very I mean, at the beginning we had a few little mistakes, but you just go back into it and go make sure this doesn't happen and that's it. I think there's no brainer. I, you know, a month or 50. Well, I think it can change the game. If you're again, let's say you're roofer a plumber, right. Typically you're going to get call outs, which is the vast majority of the calls that you go, you know, if you can, if you can respond to those urgently going, you know, again, book in a call or again, I wouldn't know how I'd work for those guys. But again, if you could see that interaction, like you could even potentially send them to a payment link and you say, hey, look, you know, yeah, you know, look, let's get you booked on. Here's the initial fee, you know, for the call out pay here. And then we'll put in a call for you. You know, it could be it could go as far as that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I heard that Alex Mosey said that he's now at the point that most of his business is closed by an AI voice bot. So, you know, when you said that the other day. Yeah, we do. You do you reckon that's absolutely legit? I don't know, I'm not sure I don't think I think there's I think humans still need to be involved in all that. Yeah. I want to set up a little bit of Pinterest art. That one. I'm like, I've had some pretty interesting phone calls with AI with, like, my bank and that. And I don't know, I don't know, I'm not the bank. One's a bit different though, isn't it? Because the bank one, the bank doesn't care. It knows that all its customers know they're on the they're at they're talking to a a bot. Yeah. No, no I get that. But in terms of like especially a sales call when you're actually at that point of closing, it's not as, it's not as scripted as like an initial fact finding call, is it. It's not. But do you know what I think if, if closing is all based around the same objection handling. Yeah. Any sales trainer could teach you got them printed up in front of me for our own calls. Right. It's always the same objection handling. If that bot knows if that box has read every single sales training book there is. Yeah. Essentially, they're going to be better than a human, aren't they? Because no matter what that person says, it's like, well, haven't got any money. Okay, I understand that, but is it is it really the money or is it the fact that there's something else in your way? Well, maybe it's just, you know, my father died a couple months ago. I'm still a bit. Okay. That's understandable, but what have we. You know what I mean? You know. Yeah. No. Yeah, I think I think, like, the delay in the pause and stuff. That's the thing, isn't it? Yeah. That timed out because it'll get quicker. Oh, no, I don't know. I'm all up for it like we spoke about and we're like absolutely. But I just I think as it sits from what I've, from what I've had experiences myself and we, I've tested one I don't know. Yeah. We're going to get it will get better though. It will get better. And that's the point where it's like, you know, when you've got things like this going on and a and an appointment setter, which is an, which is all AI. Yeah. I don't think for me, when I look at the messages in close, but I don't think I think once I've seen someone go, is this a bot? And there's a lot of messages going on, so you can so where I want to get it even more advanced is like in our in our CRM system, if someone doesn't turn up to call or something of that, obviously they fall back into a hey, an email sequence of hey, you didn't put into a call, let's get you rebooked in. All you need to do is do an SMS to say, I didn't see booked into call. When's a good time to get your book back in again? The bot can take over for that, and then it can look at my calendar. What I would, because I haven't done that bit where I'd need to be is how does it know the difference between my calendar and the other team's calendar, or does it need to be another campaign? So what, you mean? Because it's only it's only as clever as we ask it to be, so I need to figure it out. But it is just a matter. It's a matter of everything. It's the same as Facebook. As you know, people go, they don't like sitting in ads manager trying to figure out their Facebook ads. But if you want your Facebook ads to work and make your business money, you're going to have to just spend some time learning how to do it or pass it over to an agency, which usually goes to its own half the time, or come to us for help and to same with the close bot is you've got like I do, I can't see, I can't sit there and going the things rubbish, it's only rubbish because I haven't gone back into it and fix the problem that it was doing. So you've just got to spend a bit of time and we're all busy, but it's worth an investment when you start seeing that it's actually booking. I mean, this thing must book at least five calls for Luke a week. Yeah. It must be a minimum. And obviously we need to make sure that quality is as good as it can be, which is why I want to do a bit more of a quality control thing with the people that come through. But it's very good, very good. And I think everyone I mean, I'll put a link below this podcast in the description to go and have a look, but if you're listening, just go to close bot as in close. Yeah, we'll put the link, we'll put the link. We'll put the link below and they can go and have a look because I think they do a, they do a, they do like a free trial. Don't know where you can, you can free three day challenge or something like that. Yeah. So definitely we'll put a link below and kind of look at that. But yeah it's very good. I think if you're, if you're generating leads via Facebook ads and you should live with the follow up or you get an leads in the evening when you shouldn't be working and you want something just to take it off your hands. Close bot is work. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely cool. Thanks for jumping on, James. Nick, it's been a pleasure and we'll see you all soon. See you soon. Bye. Thank you for joining us again today. please feel free to drop us a message. We'd love to hear from you and any questions that you would like answered. We can do that here on the podcast. You.